Details on “The Lure of Dating an ex-lesbian”

Details magazine wants to know “Is landing a woman who once found gratification in her own sex really a cause for celebration—or something more like trepidation?” Read: What can a lesbian do for you, stud?

In a piece called “The Lure of Dating an Ex-Lesbian,”Details contributor Ian Daly makes the case for men who date “former lesbians,” including ones who have dated women but have also dated men, clearly illustrating Ian Daly has never heard the term “bisexual.”

His first point on the “pro” list of dating a woman who has been with women: Despite the fact that a lesbian has “more experience” than a guy (as opposed to also having been with a man? I don’t think that’s quite what they mean), she can also quell her longings for the same sex because Anne Heche has done it.

Seriously — Anne Heche was used as a positive example of a hasbian who has “successfully” left women for men. But if only Daly were just clueless and not completely ignorant. He follows the note about Ellen’s ex up with this tidbit:

Even Ani DiFranco, folk guitarist, feminist icon, and prominent bisexual, just hitched up with a man for the second time last January — in freaking Hawaii. And Lindsay Lohan — well, these days it’s safe to say Firecrotch will take whatever she can get.

So Ani is twice as hetero now that it’s her second marriage to a man, and Lindsay is willing to have a relationship with anything that moves? (That’s the only reason she’d leave men for Sam Ronson, right?) Any credibility I might have given Ian Daly or Details, for that matter, has now went out the door. At least he notes Ani is a bisexual, but that’s quickly a moot point when he acts as if she gets less gay by the second because of her current relationship status.

Back to the point Daly is attempting to make: Dating a former lesbian can work. Oh wait — first there is an interlude of why being a gay woman is more acceptable today: The Indigo Girls, k.d. lang, Katy Perry, and Rachel Maddow. (One of these things is not like the other.) Daly writes:

It’s safe to say the novelty has faded. A woman who began her sexual exploration in the lesbian-leaning nineties would be in her thirties now. Is it unreasonable to suggest her biological clock could also affect her sexual proclivities?

Are you kidding me? Daly is suggesting something we’ve fought for years, as both lesbians and bisexual women: That having feelings for other women is a phase, that it could pass with simply a yearning for a child or merely aging at all. Instead, our sexuality is a novelty? I’d like to meet this guy in a dark alley — with some LGBT historical literature, of course. I don’t even need to tell you that all of these “examples” (minus the glaring misstep) are out and proud and not hasbians at all.

And then we get into even more eye rolling territory where this sentence actually happens:

“I worried that perhaps I was a bit inadequate … that my penis wasn’t as big as her dildo.”

Well that’s probably true. But, in any case, I’d like to give any woman the benefit of the doubt that she is capable of maintaining a healthy, happy relationship with a man or a woman without only thinking of the size of the sex in her life, if you know what I’m saying. We’re talking about feelings and relationships here and while sex is certainly a huge part of a partnership, a straight woman could just as easily think you’re inadequate too, buddy.

The piece abruptly ends, having made no points at all, with an example of men who have had to soften up to match up with their butchier female partners, like Anne Heche’s Off Broadway-bound boyfriend, Tupper.

It is hardly a stretch, then, to suggest that the reason modern men are more ably attracting hasbians is that modern men are, quite simply, offering these women something close to what they had before.

So lesbians that date men are doing so because men are softening up a little? I missed that press release: “Men Try Out Crying, Cooking in Search for a Perfect Hasbian Partner; Hope Penis is Big Enough.”

Details, I’d give you an A for effort, but I think your writer simply took a fantasy and ran with it — right into crazy town.